The 2012 BC Building Code has a number of quite significant changes that are going to have a real impact on how homes and buildings are designed and constructed. The following is a quick summary of the changes: Long overdue in our opinion, windows, doors and skylights will now be required to meet the North American Fenestration Standard (NAFS). There is a Canadian supplement to the standard because areas of the United States did not want to have as stringent as standards . The changes are primarily going to affect manufacturers because now all of their windows, doors and skylights will be required to be tested at a higher standard which must meet minimum performance ratings. Builders, architects, designers and City inspectors will be required to ensure that every window and door that arrives on site includes a permanent label indicating the manufacturer and a non-permanent label indicating the performance rating of the window. Overall, this is great news for homeowners because better designed windows and doors will mean energy savings year after year.
This is not so much of a change as it is a clarification. It primarily affects basement bedroom windows and the distance required from the opened window to the face of the window well to allow enough clearance for the occupant to escape the window. The most significant change to the 2012 BC Building Code is this particular gem. Take note Architects and Designers because this is going to have a real impact on your designs. Due to the recent devastating fire in Slave Lake, Alberta that demolished a significant portion of the entire town, the building codes throughout Canada have decided to further reduce the amount of allowable glazing particularly along the side of homes to prevent a fire from travelling from one home to the next. The section will apply when it is determined that the subject property is outside of a 10 minute response area of the fire department or any storey in the building is not sprinklered. The City of Kelowna Fire Department is currently working with the GIS department to create maps that will clearly illustrate what properties are outside of the 10 minute response zone.
Any property that is beyond the 10 minute response zone or is not sprinklered will be required to reduce the limiting distance by 50%. This will result in a reduction of glazing on that particular building face by at least 50%. We highly recommend, don't overlook this one and make sure you have it right. This is another quite significant section relating to fire protection and the limiting distance calculations. This relates to the newly prescribed horizontal and vertical separation of the glazed openings on the same building face. Take note, this is a significant change! Another section relating to fire protection, this section defines allowable materials to be used on a building face, but particularly on a roof overhang/soffit. In some cases, if the roof overhang is within a particular distance of the property line, the overhang will require fire protection by use of materials which will not allow for attic ventilation. In addition to hallways, all bedrooms will now require a smoke alarm with not only a backup battery that lasts up to 7 days, but a silencer that allows occupants to turn off the smoke detector if it goes off when cooking toast for instance.
Basically, the silencer requirement is to prevent people from taking the smoke detector down and removing the battery. This is a new requirement that really seemed to ruffle a lot of feathers in the builder community. We don't really see it as much of an issue although it is going to add some cost to each and every home which will ultimately be passed on to the homeowner. This section deals with naturally occurring Radon Gas which is a radioactive, colorless, odorless, tasteless gas which is an indirect decay product of uranium (see Wikipedia for full explanation). It is naturally occurring throughout soils in many areas of North America and particularly the interior of BC. In fact, in a recent study, 1/3 of the tested homes throughout the Okanagan had elevated levels of radon gas. The new section will require a 100mm (4") pipe installed in the floor of the basement slab which is open to a clean granular fill beneath the slab. The idea is that the pipe will be capped and a $15 radon test (available at most major home improvement stores) can be inserted into the pipe to determine whether or not radon is an issue in your home.
The test material is left in the pipe for roughly 3 months and then it will cost about $40 to have the test analyzed. If radon gas levels are deemed to be higher than the acceptable level, it is recommended that the pipe is extended through the home to the roof where the radon gas can be distributed into the atmosphere. Additionally, the extended pipe will require an exhaust fan so that will be another added cost to the homeowner. The really interesting thing about this new requirement is that once the initial pipe is installed, the test and the extending of the pipe and addition of the exhaust fan are all the requirement of the homeowner. We'll see how this plays out as you can imagine just how many homeowners will actually be willing to spend the additional dollars. That being said, this is just common sense and there is all kinds of science to back this up, if radon gas is occurring in your home, spend the money! Your kids who are sleeping in the basement will thank you down the road!
Or you can forget about it and just hand them a pack of cigarettes and a bottle of whiskey! ha....don't you wish they had lines like that in the building code? It would at least make it a bit more entertaining to read! This change is really good for everyone within the design and construction community. This will allow taller basement concrete foundation walls as long as the walls are supported laterally (with floor joists). The increased height may require an increased wall thickness but what this does is eliminate the need and the costs of having to use a structural engineer if you want a taller ceiling height in the basement. It will be a bit of a trade off, either thicken the foundation wall which adds costs due to more concrete or pay a structural engineer to design the wall at the minimum thickness so that less material is used. The nice thing here is that at least we now have some options. Air leakage, it was interesting that this wasn't almost passed over at the workshop.
Although the changes are really minor, in our opinion, this section should be one of the most important sections simply because significant amounts of energy loss are directly related to air leakage. If we truly want to design and build better homes and buildings we need to take air leakage much more seriously! Homes and buildings within seismically sensitive areas including the BC coast and Vancouver Island coast will require a much more rigid, laterally supported structure. Fortunately, the Okanagan is outside of those seismically sensitive areas but if you are working on anything within seismic zones, this section has some pretty significant changes. For more information, BC Codes has an Illustrated Guide For Seismic Design of Houses. Overall the changes are fairly minor other than the limiting distance calculations and radon gas requirement. The most significant item that will affect all home and buildings throughout BC is the new way to calculate limiting distance. This requirement is going to have a real impact on the percentage of allowable glazing particularly on the side of a home or building.